Surface & Coatings Technology 215 (2013) 170–177

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Surface & Coatings Technology

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Impact wear and abrasion resistance of CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN PVD coatings
J.L. Mo a, b, M.H. Zhu a, A. Leyland b, A. Matthews b,⁎
a
Tribology Research Institute, Traction Power State Key Laboratory, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China
b
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 3JD, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Available online 6 November 2012 The properties of CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN coatings deposited on cemented carbide substrates by a multiple-arc
Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) technique were evaluated by cyclic impact wear and micro-scale abrasion
Keywords: testing. In the impact wear test, a 6 mm diameter tungsten carbide ball was used as the impacting body and
Abrasive wear the impact frequency (f) was set at 10 Hz. In the micro-scale abrasion test, a micro-blasted 25 mm diameter
Impact wear hardened steel ball was used as the counterface and a suspension of SiC particles (mean size of 4–5 μm) in dis-
PVD
tilled water as the abrasive slurry. After these wear tests, the wear craters were studied by stylus profilometry,
CrN
AlCrN
SEM and EDX, to investigate wear behaviour. It is shown that the CrN coating suffered much more severe impact
AlTiN deformation as compared to the two ternary coatings, and exhibited a non-linear increase of the maximum wear
depth with increasing number of impact cycles. The impact wear mechanisms of the CrN coating were mainly
plastic deformation and micro-delamination. The AlTiN coating exhibited the worst impact wear resistance
among the three coatings, mainly due to adhesive wear; in contrast, the AlCrN coating exhibited a lower tenden-
cy for the coating to pick-up the ball counterface material, and accordingly demonstrated good impact wear re-
sistance. The AlCrN coating exhibited both the best impact wear performance and the best abrasion resistance
amongst the three coatings. The CrN coating exhibited the worst abrasive wear resistance due to its comparative-
ly low hardness. The abrasive wear mechanisms of the CrN coating were a combination of plastic deformation,
fine micro-cracking and micro-spallation. The AlTiN coating suffered more severe abrasive wear compared to
the AlCrN coating, although both coatings had similar hardnesses.
© 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
It is well known that transition metal nitride hard coatings prepared
by plasma assisted Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) techniques can be
widely applied to improve the performance and lifetime of industrial
tools and machine parts [1,2]. Amongst them, CrN coatings have been
shown to have attractive properties, such as a high oxidation tempera-
ture and excellent corrosion resistance under severe environmental
conditions [3]. To further improve the general performance of CrN coat-
ings, alloying with another metal to form multi-component coatings
has been undertaken [4,5]. It is well established that CrN with added al-
uminium shows a significant increase in hardness, wear resistance and
high temperature oxidation resistance, and that the oxidation rate of
CrAlN coatings decreases with increasing aluminium content [6–13].
Compared to TiAlN-based coatings, CrAlN-based coatings have a greater
potential to improve oxidation and wear resistance [6,12]. Therefore,
many recent studies have been dedicated to Al-rich AlCrN PVD coatings,
which are of particular interest for tools and machine-components, and
are a promising candidate for other protective coating applications in
tribology [10–13].
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1142225466; fax: +44 1142225943.
E-mail address: A.Matthews@sheffield.ac.uk (A. Matthews).
In many industrial applications, PVD hard coatings are used to in-
crease the performance and lifetime of components exposed to repetitive
dynamic loading and to abrasion. Reproducible and well-characterised
methods are therefore needed to assess the resistance of PVD hard coat-
ings to these types of wear [14–17]. An impact test for PVD thin films was
first proposed by Knotek et al. [14] in 1992. During the impact test the
specimen is cyclically loaded by a hard ball that repetitively impacts on
the specimen surface. The loading geometry is usually a ball-on-flat sys-
tem which permits application of a high load with simple geometry to in-
duce a Hertzian contact stress, simulating a wide range of tribological
systems. In recent years, the impact test has been used successfully to in-
vestigate PVD coating properties under dynamic loading and evaluate
the local fatigue strength of several coating/substrate composite systems
[18–24]. The micro-scale abrasion test was also first described by
Kassman et al. [25] in 1991 as a means to measure the abrasion resistance
of thin hard coatings. In the last two decades, micro-scale abrasion tests
using the ball-cratering configuration have been widely used to charac-
terise the wear behaviour of thin hard coatings. In this test a ball is rotat-
ed against a specimen in the presence of a slurry of fine abrasive particles
[26–31].
Sliding wear properties of CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN coatings have been
studied in our previous work [12,32]. There was a need to perform im-
pact wear and micro-scale abrasion tests of these coatings to evaluate
wear caused by dynamic repetitive loading and abrasion, which

0257-8972/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.surfcoat.2012.08.077
 J.L. Mo et al. / Surface & Coatings Technology 215 (2013) 170–177
simulates industrial applications where dynamic loads and abrasion are
the main cause of coating degradation. Although some studies have
been conducted on the impact wear and abrasion properties of CrN,
CrAlN and TiAlN coatings [18–21,26,33–35], limited work has been
conducted to investigate such properties for high aluminium content
(i.e. AlCrN and AlTiN) coatings which are now increasingly used on
commercial cutting tools [10,36]. The present work was therefore un-
dertaken to investigate the impact wear and abrasion properties of
such Al-rich coatings, with a focus on their tribological response in im-
pact wear and micro-scale abrasion.
2. Experimental procedure
2.1. Sample preparation and characterization
CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN coatings were deposited by a multiple arc va-
pour deposition technique. Cemented carbide (90 wt.% WC+Cr3C2 +VC
and 10 wt.% Co, K40UF from Konrad Friedrichs Ltd.) with microhardness
of HV30 1610±40 kg/mm2 was used as the substrate material. All of the
substrates were polished to a surface roughness of approximately
0.04 μm Ra and then cleaned and dried before the coating deposition.
Pure Cr targets in a reactive nitrogen atmosphere were used to obtain
the CrN coatings, while customized Al70Cr30 and Al67Ti33 (at.%) targets
were used to obtain the AlCrN and AlTiN coatings, respectively. The
temperature of the specimens during deposition was held at approxi-
mately 450 °C for the CrN coating, 500 °C for the AlCrN coating and
600 °C for the AlTiN coating. The substrate DC-bias voltage was in the
range of −50 V to −150 V. All the three coatings have cubic structures
as determined by XRD studies (not shown). The properties of the coat-
ings are shown in Table 1. The surface roughness of the coating was
measured by using stylus profilometry. Four measurements (at random
position and orientation) were recorded to calculate an average Ra
value. A peak load of 30 mN was adopted for the nano-indentation
tests to avoid significant influence on measured hardness from the sub-
strate, by ensuring that the resulting indentation depth was within 10%
of the total coating thickness; 20 indentations per sample were
performed to obtain average values.
2.2. Impact wear test
The impact wear tests were performed on a proprietary pneumatically-
actuated cyclic impact tester [15,26], in which the specimen surface is re-
petitively stressed at a defined contact point by impacts from a hard
sphere. The piezoelectric force transducer, which outputs the resultant
impact force, was mounted below the sample holder. The impact head
assembly holding a hard sphere was cyclically moved upwards and
downwards by a two-way air valve and piston. The measured impact
force was continuously monitored and the maximum value was the
same for the duration of the test. A schematic view of the impact test ge-
ometry is shown in Fig. 1(a). The impact frequency (f) and the initial ball
to sample distance (d) were set at 10 Hz and 15 mm, respectively. A
tungsten carbide ball (grade 25 from Spheric Engineering Ltd.), 6 mm
Table 1
Properties of CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN coatings.
Coatings Coating thickness, μm Surface roughness (Ra), μm Elemental atomic
ratios estimated
from EDX
analyses
Cr/N Ti/N Al/N
CrN 6 ± 0.2 0.25 ± 0.15 1.00 – –
AlCrN 3 ± 0.2 0.13 ± 0.02 0.33 – 0.65
AlTiN 3 ± 0.2 0.15 ± 0.04 – 0.38 0.55
171
in diameter, was used as the impacting body. Each sample was subjected
to a range of impact cycles of 103, 5 ×103, 104, 2× 104 and 5× 104 cycles
at maximum normal loads of 150 N and 300 N. The maximum (initial)
Hertzian contact stress was calculated to be ~6.6 GPa for the AlCrN
and CrN coatings and ~5.9 GPa for the AlTiN coating at a normal load
of 150 N, and ~8.4 GPa for the AlCrN and CrN coatings and ~7.4 GPa
for the AlTiN coating at a normal load of 300 N. The tests were
conducted under atmospheric conditions with relative humidity of
around (50–60% RH) and at room temperature of (20–25 °C). The sur-
faces of the ball and coating were cleaned with acetone before testing,
and were always changed for each test.
2.3. Micro-scale abrasion test
The abrasion tests were performed on a Plint TE66 micro-scale abra-
sion tester [28]. A schematic of the tester is shown in Fig. 1(b). A set of 10
wear craters was produced for each sample, corresponding to a normal
load (Fn) of 0.2 N with 5 different numbers of ball revolutions (N) of
10, 20, 50, 100 and 200. The corresponding sliding distance increased
from 0.785 m (10 revolutions) to 15.7 m (200 revolutions). The ball
counterface was a micro-blasted 25 mm diameter hardened steel sphere
(SAE 52100, 61±2 HRC, Ra = 2.5±0.3 μm) and the abrasive slurry was
a suspension of SiC particles (F1200-C6, mean size 4–5 μm) in distilled
water (proportion 80 g to 100 ml distilled water). The ball rotational
speed was set to provide a linear velocity of 0.1 m/s in all tests.
After the impact and abrasion tests, the wear craters were studied
using stylus profilometry (Veeco Dektak 150), Scanning Electron Mi-
croscopy (SEM; JEOL JSM 6400) and Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX)
spectroscopy, and the impact and abrasion wear behaviour of the
coatings were considered in relation to their mechanical properties.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Impact wear properties
The wear crater cross-sectional areas were measured using stylus
profilometry. However, it is inaccurate to use this to estimate the wear
volume of the coating, considering that the arc-shape of the wear scar
profile was somewhat irregular. Therefore, the maximum wear depth
of the coatings was also measured in this work. The maximum depths
of the wear craters of the CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN coatings, corresponding
to increasing numbers of impact cycles, are shown in Fig. 2. The CrN coat-
ing showed similar wear depth at low numbers of impact cycles, com-
pared to the AlCrN coating. However, a rapid increase in wear depth
was observed for the CrN coating at higher numbers of impact cycles
(after 5×103), particularly at the higher normal load of 300 N. The max-
imum wear depth of the CrN coating was found to increase non-linearly
with an increasing number of impact cycles. The AlCrN coating exhibited
the best impact wear resistance while the AlTiN coating the worst among
the three coatings. The maximum wear depth of the AlCrN coating was
found to increase linearly with increasing numbers of impact cycles; by
contrast, there was no clear linear relationship for the AlTiN coating.
Measured mechanical properties
Nanoindentation hardness, (H), GPa Elastic modulus (E), GPa H/E ratio H3/E2 ratio
23.4 ± 5.5 473.2 ± 90 0.05 0.06
32.5 ± 8.3 474.6 ± 80 0.07 0.15
31.8 ± 6.6 359.9 ± 40 0.09 0.25
172 J.L. Mo et al. / Surface & Coatings Technology 215 (2013) 170–177

Fig. 1. Schematic of the impact wear test (a) and micro-scale abrasion test (b).

Observation of the worn surface morphologies indicates that the CrN
coating underwent significant plastic deformation under impact, as
shown in Fig. 3. Features of plastic deformation and micro-delamination
can be observed in the middle of the wear scar after 104 impact cycles
(Fig. 3(a)). With the number of impact cycles increasing to 5×104, the
middle area of the wear scar was polished by the repeated cyclic loading,
but the morphology in the intermediate zone showed the accumulation
of plastic deformation (Fig. 3(b, c, d)). No transfer of the ball material
was found inside the wear scar of the coating, as indicated by the EDX
analysis. Therefore, the impact wear mechanisms of the CrN coating
were mainly plastic deformation and micro-delamination.
Under normal loads of 150 N and 300 N, the worn surfaces of the
AlCrN coating showed a smooth morphology, on which no significant
pick-up and transfer of the ball material was observed. There was no sig-
nificant change for the wear morphologies of the AlCrN coating with in-
creasing impact cycles, except that some very minor transfer of ball
material was observed on the worn surface after 5 ×104 impact cycles,
as shown in Fig. 4. Therefore, the wear debris hardly adhered to the
worn surface of the AlCrN coating which avoided adhesive wear and
the detachment or delamination of coating by the cyclic loading. This ex-
plains the good impact wear resistance of the AlCrN coating. The wear of
the AlCrN coating can be described as a gradual process of reduction in
coating thickness by repeated impact loading.
The AlTiN coating provided different impact wear behaviours to the
AlCrN coating, exhibiting mainly adhesive wear. Large areas of pick-up
and ball material transfer were observed inside the wear scar of the
AlTiN coating at lower numbers of impact cycles (103 and 5 × 103).
The morphology of the transfer layer indicates that the ball counterface
suffered progressive surface degradation, experiencing continuous de-
tachment of particles from its surface (Fig. 5a, b). EDX spectra of the
transfer layer and the underlying worn surface show a significant pres-
ence of oxygen in the transfer layer, due to tribo-oxidation occurring
during the impact test; however, no presence of elements from the
ball material (or of oxygen) can be detected in the underlying worn sur-
face (Fig. 5c). Eventually, these transfer layers became detached after a
higher number of impact cycles. The exfoliation of these transfer layers
leads to the introduction of loose particles to the contact surface, which
tends to accelerate coating wear. Back-Scattered Electron (BSE) imaging
of wear scars shows that the AlTiN coating is worn through to the sub-
strate after only 2 × 104 impact cycles (Fig. 6a). No significant pick-up of
the ball material can be observed inside the wear scar at this stage;
however, some wear debris was scattered on the worn surface and
around the edge of the wear scar. The bright area inside the wear scar
is indicative of substrate material exposure, suggesting that the coating
has been removed in this zone. Observation of this zone at higher mag-
nification reveals that the degradation mechanism of the AlTiN coating
can be described as a gradual process of reduction in coating thickness
by repeated impact loading (Fig. 6b).
Observation of the worn surface morphology indicates that the CrN
coating underwent much more severe impact deformation compared to
the AlCrN coating. The main difference in impact wear behaviour be-
tween CrN and AlCrN was the level of plastic deformation, which can

Fig. 2. Maximum wear depths of CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN coatings under normal loads of 150 N (a) and 300 N (b): N = 103, 5 × 103, 104, 2 × 104 and 5 × 104 cycles.
 J.L. Mo et al. / Surface & Coatings Technology 215 (2013) 170–177 173

Fig. 3. SEM images of the CrN coating after 104 (a) and 5 × 104 (b, c, and d) impact cycles: Fn = 300 N.

explain the completely non-linear increase of the maximum wear significant plastic deformation occurred for the coating. The AlCrN coat-
depth of the CrN coating with increasing number of impact cycles. In ing showed that a high aluminium content provides significant in-
this work, the impact wear depth of the coating was found to increase creases in hardness and impact wear resistance over CrN. The main
linearly with increasing numbers of impact cycles, as long as no difference in impact wear behaviour between the AlCrN and AlTiN

Fig. 4. SEM images of the AlCrN coating after 104 (a and b) and 5 × 104 (b and c) impact cycles: Fn = 300 N.
174 J.L. Mo et al. / Surface & Coatings Technology 215 (2013) 170–177

Fig. 5. SEM images (a and b) and EDX spectra (c) of transferred counterface material and the undamaged AlTiN coating (each sampled as shown in b) after 5×103 impact cycles: Fn =300 N.

coatings was the different levels of adhesive wear. The AlCrN coating
exhibited much better impact wear resistance than the AlTiN coating,
which can be mainly attributed to the fact that the AlCrN coating had
less ‘tribochemical’ interaction with the ball counterface. This was con-
sistent with the sliding wear testing results of the two coatings reported
in our previous work [12], in which the AlCrN coating showed a lower
tendency of the coating to pick-up ball material or wear debris and
accordingly exhibited better sliding wear resistance as compared to
the AlTiN coating. Overall, these differences can probably be attributed
to two main factors. The first is related to the fact that Ti in the AlTiN
coating had a stronger affinity to ball counterface elements. Secondly,
the AlTiN coating had a higher friction coefficient, as a consequence of
the greater ‘tribochemical’ interaction between the AlTiN coating and
the ball counterface. It is interesting to notice that there was no visible

Fig. 6. SEM-BSE (a) and SEM-SE (b) images of the AlTiN coating after 2 × 104 impact cycles: Fn = 300 N.
 J.L. Mo et al. / Surface & Coatings Technology 215 (2013) 170–177
Fig. 7. Maximum wear depth of the CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN coatings after different ball
revolutions.
crack formation for all the three coatings during the impact tests, which
can be attributed to their good toughness as well as the high stiffness
and load support provided by the cemented carbide substrates.
3.2. Abrasive wear properties
The maximum wear crater depths of the CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN coat-
ings with increasing number of ball revolutions are shown in Fig. 7. The
AlCrN coating was found to have the best abrasive wear resistance
among the three coatings. The CrN coating became worn through dur-
ing 50–100 ball revolutions and exhibited much worse abrasive wear
resistance as compared to the two Al-containing coatings. The hardness
of the SiC abrasive media is 2100–2600 HV; therefore, both the AlCrN
and AlTiN coatings are much harder than the SiC particles whereas
the CrN coating is slightly softer. A well-known parameter in abrasive
wear testing is the ratio between the hardness of the substrate (Hs)
Fig. 8. Abrasive wear morphologies of the CrN coating after 10 (a and b) and 100 (c and d) ball revolutions.
175
and of the abradant (Ha). Particulate abrasion typically occurs when
the ratio Hs/Ha is less than 1.3. In this situation, the abrasion will lead
to much greater wear rates [34]. In this work, the CrN coating had a
low Hs/Ha ratio of about 0.72 and thus a low abrasion resistance. How-
ever, it is interesting that the AlCrN coating exhibited much better
anti-abrasive wear properties than the AlTiN coating, although both
coatings had comparable Hs/Ha ratios in the range of 1.22–1.54.
It is known that the types of damage produced in micro-abrasion
testing can be classified into two principal categories, depending on
the predominant topography of the scar surface. Abrasive wear scars
tend to exhibit either unidirectional parallel grooves or a multiple
indented surface topography with no noticeable directionality, which
can be identified as being caused by either two- or three-body abrasion,
respectively. In this work a low normal load of 0.2 N was adopted, to en-
sure that three-body rolling was the dominant wear mechanism, to pro-
vide repeatable results [27,28,31].
The CrN coating exhibited much more severe abrasive wear com-
pared to that of the other two coatings, which was characterised by brit-
tle fracture. The wear mechanisms of the CrN coating were a combination
of plastic deformation, fine micro-cracking and micro-spallation, as
shown in Fig. 8. Because the CrN coating was softer than the SiC abradant
particles, this seems to encourage dragging of the particles into the con-
tact and then scoring of the coating by a micro-cutting action. Fine
micro-cracking and micro-spalling of the coating occurred within just
the first 10 ball revolutions (Fig. 8a and b), which continued with increas-
ing numbers of ball revolutions until the coating was finally delaminated
and removed by the cutting of the abrasive particles (Fig. 8c and d).
Fig. 9(a) shows SEM micrographs of the AlCrN coating correspond-
ing to increasing numbers of ball revolutions. The surface morphology
shows that the SiC particles did not embed into the AlCrN coating sur-
face in the first 10 ball revolutions; they rolled between the two counter
surfaces and produced a very slightly deformed and multiple indented
worn surface with no evident surface directionality. With increasing
number of ball revolutions, the abrasive wear became visible on the
worn surface, as traces of the microscopic defects (e.g. macro-droplets,
pores and pinholes), besides some very slight grooving. Considering
176 J.L. Mo et al. / Surface & Coatings Technology 215 (2013) 170–177

that the AlCrN coating is much harder than the SiC particles, from the
gradual occurrence of shallow grooves it can be deduced that some of
the abrasive particles were embedded in the surface of the steel ball
counterface and acted as fixed indenters, which consequently produced
the damage observed. Moreover, the size of these grooves was clearly
comparable to the mean size of the abrasive particles used. Therefore,
the abrasive wear of the AlCrN coating can be described as gradual
polishing and micro-abrasion by the abrasive particles; no heavy plastic
deformation or micro-cracking occurred. Compared to the situation
with the AlCrN coating, the wear of the AlTiN coating was mainly
characterised by a combination of multiple indentions and plastic defor-
mation, which increased with increasing number of ball revolutions. Fi-
nally the coating material became worn through after a certain number
of ball revolutions, exposing the substrate material, as shown in

Fig. 9. Abrasive wear morphologies and EDX spectra of the AlCrN (a) and AlTiN (b) coatings after different ball revolutions.
 J.L. Mo et al. / Surface & Coatings Technology 215 (2013) 170–177
Fig. 9(b). Also, it is worth noting that microscopic coating defects did not
act as the original wear site during the abrasive wear process for both
AlCrN and AlTiN coatings. EDX analysis conducted on the worn surfaces
shows that no material transfer or tribo-oxidation can be detected for
either the AlCrN or the AlTiN coatings during the abrasive wear (Fig. 9).
For both coatings, no significant change can be observed between the
EDX spectra of the worn surfaces and the as-deposited coating.
In this work, the coating hardness was found to play a key factor in
the abrasion resistance when the coating had a comparable or relatively
lower hardness than the abrasive particles, in accordance with the expec-
tation that the ability of the abrasive particles to “scratch” the coating sur-
face decreased with increasing coating hardness. As expected, the AlCrN
coating with a higher hardness provided a significant increase in abrasion
resistance compared to CrN. However, it is noted that the AlCrN coating
also exhibited much better abrasion resistance than the AlTiN coating,
although both coatings had similar hardnesses and the latter even had
a lower measured elastic modulus. It is reported that a coating designed
to resist micro-abrasive wear must indeed have high hardness to resist
scratching and ploughing but should also have a low elastic modulus
to resist plastic deformation during contact against a counterface. A ma-
terial with a lower Young's modulus can also elastically deform to dis-
tribute the contact strain over a larger coating volume, thereby
reducing the maximum contact stress [31,37]. It can also be shown
that resistance to plastic deformation is dependent on the ratio H3/E2,
and the contact loads required to induce plastic deformation in materials
with high hardness and low elastic modulus (i.e. a high H3/E2 ratio) are
higher [38]. Furthermore, a material with high H3/E2 value can better re-
sist the initiation of cracking damage [39]. Based on these factors, the
AlTiN coating should exhibit better abrasion resistance than the AlCrN
coating. However, the fact is that the AlCrN coating with a higher elastic
modulus had much better abrasion resistance than the AlTiN coating
with a lower elastic modulus – although it should be noted that the
(stiff) cemented carbide substrate may significantly influence the mea-
sured coating elastic modulus values. Comparing the abrasive wear be-
haviours of the AlCrN and AlTiN coatings, it was found that the AlTiN
coating suffers more severe multiple indentation. AlTiN coatings have
been reported to have a higher friction coefficient compared to AlCrN
coatings in both reciprocating sliding and ball-on-disc wear tests in our
previous work [12]. The more severe wear of the AlTiN coating from
the abrasive particles can possibly be caused by the fact that the AlTiN
coating had a higher friction coefficient (possibly due to tribochemical
interactions in the sliding contact), which would cause more abrasive
particles to be dragged into the contact.
4. Conclusions
CrN, AlCrN and AlTiN coatings were deposited by a multiple-arc
plasma-assisted PVD technique and mechanical properties were stud-
ied. Impact wear and micro-scale abrasion tests were performed to in-
vestigate the impact and abrasion resistance of the three coatings.
There was no visible crack formation for all three coatings during the
impact tests. The AlCrN coating exhibited both good impact wear per-
formance and good abrasion resistance. The impact wear resistance of
the AlCrN coating can be mainly attributed to the low tendency of the
coating to pick-up ball material. In contrast, the impact wear of the
AlTiN coating was caused mainly by adhesive interaction with the ball
counterface, and the coating accordingly demonstrated worse impact
wear resistance. The differences between AlCrN and AlTiN in tendency
to pick-up ball material can be mainly attributed to the elemental com-
position of the coatings, i.e. Ti and Cr showed different affinities to ball
counterface elements and accordingly resulted in different friction coef-
ficients. The CrN coating was found to undergo much more severe plas-
tic deformation under impact as compared to both the AlCrN and AlTiN
coatings. The impact wear mechanisms of the CrN coating were mainly
plastic deformation and micro-delamination. The CrN coating exhibited
the worst abrasive wear resistance among the three coatings due to its
177
comparatively low hardness (lower than that of the SiC abradant). Plas-
tic deformation, fine micro-cracking and micro-spallation processes
played a substantial role in the abrasive wear of CrN. The AlTiN coating
exhibited a lower abrasion resistance than the AlCrN coating, despite
the fact that both coatings had similar hardnesses. This can be attributed
to the AlTiN coating with higher friction coefficient suffering a more se-
vere multiple indentation from the abrasive particles.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Prof. Z.R. Zhou, Southwest Jiaotong
University, for helpful discussions and B. Lei, Zigong Cemented Carbide
(Chengdu tool department) Corp. Ltd., for providing coated carbide sam-
ples. The authors are grateful for the financial support of the National Sci-
entific Foundation of China (No. 51005191), of the Research Fund for the
Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No. 20100184120003)
and for a scholarship to J.L. Mo, under the State Scholarship Fund of the
China Scholarship Council (CSC), to pursue study in the University of
Sheffield as an Academic Visitor.
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